I have been staying tuned to the constant news of an economic bust where people are losing homes, jobs, and retirement savings. In my city, there is a definite squeeze where costs are being cut to try and avoid some job losses. In some cases, it isn’t because of a lack of revenue; it’s to save money for a nuclear winter in the event that money is not available in the future. It’s a mode that many businesses are operating under, and from my radar, it’s most visible in the tech sector.

While I don’t pay attention to tech blogs like I use to, I still hear about the effects of the down economy on tech companies, primarily Silicon Valley startups, via my regular tech podcasts. One company that was recently affected was Revision3, a new media company that focuses on IPTV shows. On October 27, Revision3′s CEO, Jim Louderback, announced show cuts and layoffs, which included axing popSiren, Internet Superstar, and Pixel Perfect. Later, the GigaOm Show and The Revision3 Gazette were also canceled from Revision3′s lineup after the original blog post. Revision3 also ended its distribution deals with Wine Library TV and EPIC FU and laid off approximately 10 of their staff, which included popular hosts Sarah Lane and Martin Sargent. This wasn’t a surprising move to me since many startups are announcing cuts. What also wasn’t surprising was the comments left by Revision3 “fans” on the blog post and message boards.

The familiar toxic environment that I grew tired of at the Digg community spilled over to Revision3, which is unsurprising considering Digg’s Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson are two of Revision3′s founders. Many commenters started off berating Louderback’s “crazy” decision to axe the wrong shows before they eventually starting denouncing the man himself. The mob then turned their attacks on Rose for “hanging Sarah Lane out on a limb” by promoting their joint appearance on an upcoming Digg Reel via the TWiT podcast. They seem to think that Rose knew that Lane would be getting laid off yet promoted a joint appearance on the number one tech podcast. While I don’t know Rose, I find it hard to believe he would embarrass himself, Lane, and his company by promoting their appearance on TWiT if he knew she would be laid off the next day. Now, is it possible Rose knew cuts were coming? Probably, but it doesn’t mean he knew who would be getting cut until the Revision3 board made their decisions. The tidal wave of backlash coming at Rose even prompted him to make an official post on his blog and not just his Twitter feed. After the mob ceased their attacks on Rose, they once again turned on Louderback and some of the recent business decisions at Revision3. It is the latter that I will focus on.

After sifting through the noise, I finally found some comments that I agreed with. Those comments include Revision3′s decision to build a studio in San Francisco and allegedly make shows relocate their production there (to use the new studio) or get canceled. When I watched Lane show off Revision3′s construction efforts on their studio (in a Revision3 Gazette episode), I was surprised that they were spending their venture capital money on that. I felt that building a studio at such an early stage of the company was unnecessary. In hindsight, it seems that Revision3 may be regretting it as well since they’re renting it out and only producing a couple of shows (Tekzilla, Systm, and the Digg Reel) in the studio at this point. Had Revision3 not built a studio, perhaps they could have retained the people and/or shows they had to cut. Shows like the Totally Rad Show (taped in a garage in Los Angeles) and EPIC FU (taped in a room in Los Angeles) prove that you don’t need a studio to produce a really good show. New media viewers won’t care where a show is produced as long as it has good content, good hosts, and is edited professionally. This is something that Revision3 seemed to understand in the early days of its life but forgot over the past year with the launch and failure of several new shows.

Under Louderback, Revision3 was growing and expanding fast with a goal to launch new shows each quarter. I found this goal ambitious but flawed. Instead of launching new shows every quarter to find out if one (or none) would stick, I think Revision3 should have focused on making the shows that were doing well better. I have watched some of the new shows under Louderback’s reign and found some pointless and/or tweaked copycats of shows they already had. Sometimes, less really is more. I’d rather have a smaller stable of well-produced shows with good and distinctive content over a large number of shows with bland or overused hosts and redundant/pointless content.

I also found that a few of the show hosts just weren’t good on-screen personalities – a must if you want people watch a weekly video podcast. This is one of the reasons why I think Revision3 should have stayed in Los Angeles. There are plenty of out of work (or trying to work) actors/actresses, cameramen, editors, etc. looking for gigs, and Revision3 would have had a bigger and better selection than what’s available in San Francisco (based on some of the hosts/editors, etc. they’ve had). While I enjoy some Revision3 shows, some of the camera work and editing has an unprofessional slant written all over them. This was fine when Revision3 was still a very small operation without office space and only had a few shows. However, if they want to convince the rest of the world that they’re the next hot thing in new media, then they need to show it by hiring professionals with experience. Hint: if Steve has camera/editing friends, hire them.

I have been cheering for Revision3 ever since I discovered Diggnation in 2006, but over the past year, the little IPTV company that could took a wrong turn with unnecessary spending and odd business decisions. Hopefully, they’ll get back on track after learning some hard lessons on what not to do to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Related Post

• Where Revision3′s Social Brew Went Wrong

I have fallen victim to these issues before in the past. For three straight years, I blogged very consistently, pretty much on a weekly basis. Back then, blogging was new to me, and I loved the idea of free-form communication on the web without restraints. There was a time when I thought I’d never stop blogging but I did. I didn’t feel as committed to blogging every week and that I was forcing myself to write about something just to post and appease my readers. However, forcing words just for my audience felt false because I just wasn’t feeling it the way I once did. The shiny luster of blogging had worn off, and I also felt burned out. So I took a hiatus and eventually decided to shut my first blog down about two months later.

For approximately one year, I didn’t blog before I got the itch to return. I resurfaced under this domain and took a different approach to blogging from my previous one. I wrote whenever I felt like I wanted to write and tried not to fall under pressure to post every day or even every week. I succeeded and actually thought I could survive the blogosphere, possibly for good. Then Twitter happened.

I love Twitter – when it isn’t failing of course – and used the micro-blogging tool as an “ad hoc service” to blogging here at WriteTilt.com. When I first started using Twitter, I dismissed the tool as a blogging replacement. And of course, you can’t say as much with 140 characters as you can with a blog. However, an odd thing happened to me. As I used Twitter more, my desire and commitment to blogging slowly diminished. I found that I liked the idea of expressing myself in small spurts throughout the day rather than sitting down and thinking about a topic to expand upon in a blog post. Still, I didn’t think that long-form blogging was dead…until I heard a recent Net@Night episode.

I had a sudden realization as Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur discussed the death of blogs that blogging might be over for me. I started thinking and realized that blogs were not that important to me anymore. I had stopped reading a number of blogs and reduced my subscription to approximately 10 RSS feeds. I wasn’t posting as frequently here because I felt that Twitter was almost enough for me 99% of the time. I also didn’t feel the need to dig into topics with depth on WriteTilt.com because my focus has increasingly turned towards other personal ventures/projects. And finally, I fell victim to the culture of redundancy in the blogosphere. Why do I need to spend so much time thinking and writing about things that thousands of other bloggers are discussing at the same time? Yes, I know that my voice as a writer is what makes me different, but at the same time, that’s a lot of noise for a reader to filter through when searching on a topic. I still have things to say, but if I can say it in a 140 characters or less or via Pownce, then I’m perfectly fine with that. I can devote my energy to more important personal projects rather than spending so much time composing posts and doing research that thousands of others are doing.

That being said, I’ve been pondering what to do with WriteTilt.com. I have thought about converting the site to a Tumblr blog or using it as a launch page for all of my social networks. However, at the same time, I go back and forth about taking down what I’ve written and maintaining a blog for when I do have things to say that requires more than 140 characters. I haven’t come to a decision as of yet. There was a time when I thought WriteTilt.com would become a brand, and on a much smaller scale, it is. However, I’m not trying to be Michael Arrington with TechCrunch or a number of other heavily trafficked blogs. Quite frankly, I’m not trying to kill myself blogging around the clock in a bid to keep up with the big boys, which is a sure-fire way to burn out.

I know some people would say I could continue to blog on my own terms, whenever I want. The problem is that I see myself blogging even less as I get more involved in my other projects. I have also asked myself one simple question: if I left blogging for good, would it matter to me? The answer to the question is no, it wouldn’t matter. So, will I continue to blog? I don’t know the answer to that question just yet. It’s one I’m still pondering every day.

Non-compelling and/or Mismatched Hosts

Social Brew’s main host was Irene McGee of Real World Seattle fame. I thought it was an odd choice from the beginning, but I definitely felt it wasn’t the wisest of choices after watching episode one. One thing I noticed about McGee was that she seemed uncomfortable and nervous on camera. She talked – a whole lot – with her hands, which I spent more time watching (in annoyance) than listening to what she was saying. She also had an irritating tendency to ramble, make things about her, and take over the conversion, which she did improve upon in future episodes. I know some viewers also held the “Stephen incident” against her, which turned into a minor controversy on Rev3’s forums. I’m also aware that some people just didn’t think she had enough “geek cred” to host the show, but it wasn’t as if she was hosting Systm, people. Personally, I found that McGee, aside from the other annoyances, just wasn’t interesting as a host and lacked the “it” factor.

I can say the same for co-hosts Johnny Hwin and Neha Tiwari (who was actually good on Tekzilla). While I felt they were better hosts than McGee, I found them mostly boring whenever they were on camera. They primarily lacked a “spark” whenever they were discussing topics for their segments, which made me wonder if they really liked what they were doing. The only exception was Moujon Z. whose personality stood out and whose comic relief was the best thing about the show; however, I felt that in some ways, she didn’t belong on Social Brew. Moujon was the extreme opposite among all of her co-hosts, which made it even more obvious that she was neon pink and everyone else was just beige in terms of on-screen personality.

Lack of On-Screen Chemistry

I’m a “smart” TV/film viewer who looks deeper than most average viewers. So I know that on-screen chemistry is either something you have right away (Tekzilla with Patrick Norton and Veronica Belmont), is something that eventually comes (The GigaOm Show with Om Malik and Joyce Kim), or it just never happens. Based on the four episodes I watched, I felt that Social Brew’s hosts fell into the later two categories. As a viewer, on-screen chemistry is extremely important and can be a compelling reason to watch a show, aside from the content. The only Social Brew hosts that had any on-screen chemistry together was Moujon and McGee, oddly enough. However, whenever McGee was paired with anyone else, the chemistry was lacking or non-existent.

Redundancy Victim

For me, Social Brew offered redundancy by covering social networks because the information covered was on a number of influential technology blogs. In fact, I read about the majority of the social networks featured on Social Brew through my blog subscriptions. I also felt that the topics they covered could have been handled in a short segment on The GigaOm Show, which leads me into another example of redundancy.

If The GigaOm Show were king, then consider Social Brew its unwanted child spawned by a peasant maiden. While I’m aware The GigaOm Show leans towards the entrepreneur, Social Brew’s coverage of social networks had more relevance on The GigaOm Show. There’s already too much redundancy on the Internet, and it’s definitely unnecessary to have it on the same IPTV network.

Flawed Premise

All other issues aside, the premise of Social Brew was flawed from the very beginning. Rev3 seemed to produce a show covering social networks simply because most of their viewers are on social networks. That doesn’t mean the audience wanted a show dedicated to social networking and the random tweets on people’s Twitter feeds. If I want to read tweets, I can easily go to Twitter or get the RSS feed for the public timeline. I don’t need to see screenshots of “interesting tweets” on a weekly video podcast. The same can be said about Social Brew’s weekly solicitation of people’s Zune Social profiles and any other social network.

I sincerely believe that Social Brew only existed because Rev3 viewers, including me, filled out their survey a few months ago. If true, that in itself made Social Brew’s foundations flawed. It was a vehicle to harness a “massive” audience of social networking users, which Rev3 could leverage into more revenue. The show wasn’t about people with a genuine passion for something they love (The Totally Rad Show). It was a show derived from a survey, something that many viewers immediately noticed and pounced on. Once Rev3 had a full backlash on their hands, they tried to tweak the show to save it, but you can’t save something that has huge flaws in its foundation. The cracks in that foundation only widened, and Louderback, seeing that, wisely pulled the plug. If Rev3 had recognized the problems with Social Brew from the beginning, perhaps the collateral damage could have been prevented.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

[Thanks to Shawnz for sharing this.]

Whether Digg is for sale or is on the verge of being acquired doesn’t really matter that much to me. I login to my Digg account periodically, but more often than not, months will go by before I visit the site. The site just isn’t as compelling for me as it once was; however, the same can’t be said for thousands of other users. Some are threatening an outright revolt. They are threatening to leave Digg (especially if Microsoft is the buyer) and jump ship to another competitor (Reddit, Propeller, etc.) if Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose “sells out and cashes out.” Have any of these Digg users speaking out against the alleged sale considered that Adelson and Rose are ready to move on to something else? Did they think Rose started Digg as a gathering place for fanboys to congregate? Last time I checked, Digg is not a non-profit; it’s a for-profit business. Anyone who goes into business may want to work for themselves and/or do something they’re passionate about, but they also want to make money.

Frankly, I don’t care what they do. It’s their business (literally), and they can do what they want with it. However, many Digg users don’t feel the same. They believe they “own” the site by providing content, and that if they whine enough, Digg will cave as they have done before. This sense of “entitlement and ownership” around Digg (or any other service) is the problem with the whole “wisdom of the crowds” philosophy. It’s a good idea in theory, but it’s a bad idea in practice.

We already store a lot of information about ourselves online. If you use Internet-based email, PayPal, eBay, perform online banking, or pay your bills online, then your private and financial information is stored in multiple servers all over the world. Considering the rash of data leaks – companies losing backup drives/tapes, laptops, etc. – over the past few years, you have plenty to worry about. Therefore, the idea of cloud computing, which is nothing new, should raise even more red flags. Let’s take a look at an example.

You’re a company and decide to use Google Docs instead of paying expensive licensing fees for Microsoft Office. You write proprietary information about your company, which can include financials, technical specifications for your “super secret” application/service, and private/confidential employee information. As soon as you click the Save button for the first time in Google Docs, Google knows a lot about your company. What controls are in place to stop some unscrupulous employee from going through your documents and stealing your idea or employee information? What controls are in place to stop some ex-employee from accessing these servers remotely using the admin login and password? I can definitely attest that unless your company changes server passwords frequently, nothing can stop this from happening. I know of a company that never changed the passwords to their servers and were, in fact, quite easy to guess. Additionally, every former employee could access the machine if they have the right (hacking) tools. Nothing but a current or former employee’s honor and integrity stops a huge data leak for this particular company. That’s the same thing that we, as consumers, have to depend on when storing and/or using applications and services online.

That being said, if you’ve ever used any online service or application, there’s little to nothing you can do when it comes to the storage of your information on servers. However, you can limit the spread of your digital imprint by restricting yourself from using some of these Internet applications. If you’re security conscious of your data – and in this day and age, you should be – then you should definitely limit your use of cloud computing. I’m sure that several cloud computing applications are better than my desktop applications; however, I don’t have any control over my data online. I don’t know how it’s being stored, how long it’s being stored, or who’s viewing my data without my knowledge. I do have control of the data I store on my computer, which makes me feel like I’m in the driver’s seat and not some company I’m trusting to ensure they follow (or have) privacy and security procedures.

Who would you trust? Yourself or some company filled with people you don’t know?